Alpha Centauri trademarks registered by EA

A clutch of Alpha Centauri trademarks have been gobbled up by EA, report Eurogamer .

. The trademark applications were spotted by NeoGaf, and cover an online serviceand computer game software. EA originally published Firaxis' cosmic take on the Civilization formula way back in 1999.

Alpha Centauri appears regularly in our annual selection of the top 100 PC games of all time, because it's great. Could EA be planning a long-awaited sequel?